Amid last year’s unprecedented funding cuts, shrinking civic space, and gender backlash, the Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe chose ambition. We committed €2.9 million to 46 gender equality organisations in 21 countries, bringing our total giving to €7.5 million since launching in 2021. We also expanded our reach, supporting organisations in Serbia, Georgia, and Armenia for the first time.
To meet this critical moment for women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, we introduced new work areas: strengthening movements as well as gender and democracy, and adopted trust-based approaches that helped our partners build resilience when it mattered most.
In 2025, we continued to provide support beyond the main grant, offering up to €15,000 to help grassroots gender equality organisations build resilience, agility, and sustainability, with 95% reporting stronger internal capacity, from financial resilience to staff wellbeing to improved internal policies and strategies.
The year also required creating spaces for connection, learning, and hope. In October, we hosted our annual grantee convening in Brussels, bringing together nearly all grantee partners and member foundations. The event was a space to exchange ideas, strengthen relationships, and foster a shared sense of resilience and solidarity.
We also stepped up our efforts to mobilise the philanthropic community. Our philanthropy advocacy efforts focused on three priorities: directly engaging funders to secure more and better funding for gender equality in Europe; improving grant-making practices of our member foundations through peer learning; and sharing evidence and stories of impact in our communications. We welcomed Fondation BNP Paribas as our newest member and secured €500,000 in additional commitments for 2026.
“In some of the darkest moments of 2025, seeing how our grantee partners are creating change across Europe reminds me why funding this work is so essential,” writes Nadège Lharaig, Director at the Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe.
From Budapest to Berlin to Bucharest, grassroots gender equality organisations continued to uplift marginalised women, trans, and non-binary people. With the Alliance’s Economic Opportunities funding, they expanded economic opportunities, financial independence, and job skills for 26,200 people – mainly women, girls, and gender minorities – between 2023 and 2025.
Our grantee partners also contributed to systems change, changing how equality is lived and understood across Europe. Through legal reform, court decisions, collective agreements, awareness-raising campaigns, and narrative change strategies, our grantee partners have collectively extended their impact to 14 million people, or nearly 30 million since 2021. They challenged harmful norms, defended hard-won rights, built movements, and brought communities together to advance equality.
The Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe (the Alliance) is a philanthropic initiative created in 2021 to support and strengthen the grassroots gender equality movement in Europe. It is composed by Bodossaki Foundation, Fondation BNP Paribas, Fondation CHANEL, Fondation de France, Fondation RAJA-Danièle Marcovici, King Baudouin Foundation, and L’Oréal Fund for Women, and hosted by the Network of European Foundations. Through grant-making, capacity strengthening, and awareness raising, the Alliance improves gender equality for all by transforming harmful gender norms and addressing the structural barriers that reinforce inequality and exclusion.
Main photo: Anja Strelec / Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe